as wind rode your arching back, your hair a tumbled, yellow cloud,the only light in a fading dayof dirty white and depthless, concrete grey.Movements slower, harder as we near home.

Stiffening as cold seeps into bone.Nearly numb just before entry.Eyes closed, fingers dead, you fumbled for my key.

Brittle

You can spank a bad boy with a finger-thick willow switch,cut fresh, dripping green and running full of summer sap.Or you can curl it back, head to tail upon itself, end on end.Go even further, make it bend into the Christian fish;an alpha. Then let it snap! The tension gone, it rises, spinning,falling, finally. Lost in high grass by the swimming hole.

That branchâ€™s brother cut in winterâ€™s short, sharp noon wonâ€™t yieldup one degree of give. The juice that lives in sun and rain is gone,sucked down to ground. It sleeps in rocks. The willow only knowsof it in dreams of caravanserai, eastern gifts and tales of kings.

â€œSoftly,â€ is the wise-word of the willow on his darkening wind,his long-night solstice wind that shakes the lights and brittle bulbshung on the changeless, undead pines.The willow sleeps and waits for limber times.

Snow Angel

Fallen, fallen in the snow.You can point, but she is gone.

We name the hole the thing. The wet recesswhere she once lay. Itâ€™s long hatchedits angel, though.

Wind and flakes have now erased her footprints thereand back. Two wings. Two legs. A head.A halo whereshe shook her snowsuit hood.

The hole is not whatâ€™s real.

The angel is revealed, released and dances nowwith cocoa and a powdered doughnut. Howthe white fluff coats her fingers,coats her cheeks.